In the manufacture of processed cheese, fresh cheese curd and various types of ground cheese are blended together and subsequently heated or cooked to pasturize the cheese. Fresh cheese curd is not particularly cohesive so that the curds will not tend to matt together and the curd can be conveyed by conventional pneumatic systems. However, particles of ground cheese are extremely cohesive and tend to matt together and bridge across pneumatic conveying equipment.
Because of this, pneumatic conveying of ground cheese has not been satisfactorily practiced in the past. Therefore, the practice has been to either transport the ground cheese manually through use of shovels and carts, or to transport it by means of belt conveyors or auger conveying systems.
The use of belt conveyors for conveying ground cheese has certain disadvantages in that the ground cheese tends to adhere to the belt and particles of cheese may pass around the rollers at the ends of the conveyor onto the underside of the belt. The cheese particles adhering to the underside of the belt can contaminate components of the conveying system. It is necessary in the cheese making practice to clean all parts of the operating equipment after each production run, and it is extremely difficult to clean the cheese particles from certain components of the belttype conveyor, such as bearings. Furthermore, a belt type conveyor is not versatile in operation in that its route is fixed and additional belt conveyors must be employed to deliver the ground cheese to various locations.
Auger conveying systems have similar disadvantages to that of belt conveyor systems in that they are difficult to clean and are not readily adapted to a change of route nor the delivery of cheese to multiple locations.